billvon’s Recent Comments

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  the fracturing of the environmental movement

  >The rising tide of pro nuclear power talking points
  > from many environmental activists recently is very
  >disturbing!

  I think what you are seeing is the environmental movement begin to fracture.  It is getting bigger and bigger, and when things get bigger, they tend to specialize internally.

  At one extreme we have the Earth Firsters, people who burn down houses and destroy cars to make their environmental points.  Their planks are a halt to any development in sensitive areas, strict vegetarianism, no logging etc - in other words, environmentalism through poverty.

  At the other extreme we have the conservative 'environmentalists' who buy natural cotton towels and call it done.  They then drive home in their Ford Expedition, throw the towels in their electric dryer, and crank the A/C.  They are for clean coal and the clear-air initiative because those things sound good and don't cost them anything.

  There's a big middle that's between two of them.  And many of those middle people are looking for a compromise, something that will clean up the environment and not destroy the country's economy, as shutting down all coal and nuclear power plants would do.  Only rich people can afford environmentalism, so destroying the economy will not be in anyone's best interests.

  Nuclear is certainly not the best source of power out there, but it's better than coal, and it's the only way we're ever going to even get started on a hydrogen economy.  If we replaced every coal fired power plant out there with a nuclear power plant, we would generate far less nuclear waste, save the lives of 30,000 americans every year, and save millions of acres of land from stripmining.

  That's mid-term.  In the long term, we may get hydrogen fusion working, or we may get to the point where we can store enough wind/solar power to be able to run on that exclusively.  But in the meantime we have to decide not what's perfect, but what's good enough.

  --bill von

  On An optimistic op-ed on Washington state climate moves. posted 4 years, 5 months ago 6 Responses

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  Natural gas to hydrogen?

  >Without the natural gas, there never will be
  >a hydrogen economy on a global scale.

  I don't understand.  Surely you are not proposing making hydrogen from methane (natural gas?)  Methane is a clean fuel, it can be produced from biological sources, is easy to transport/store/use, is already distributed via nationwide pipelines, and we already have vehicles that use it.  To change it to hydrogen - a gas that is harder to store, distribute, and use - makes little sense.
  On An interview with doomsaying author James Howard Kunstler posted 4 years, 6 months ago 25 Responses

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  the big picture

  jdhlax proposes several ways to reduce power usage, including:

  >First, cover all roofs with solar panels.

  Good idea, but that's not reducing power usage in the short term, it's increasing it.  The glass, silicon and aluminum needed to produce a solar panel takes a lot of energy to create.  Where does it come from?

  >Eliminate wasteful use of electricity, such as streetlights. . . .

  OK.  Let's say you get a tremendous amount of political capital, sufficient to remove all streetlights (and then weather the storm when fatalities at night go up.)  Even after that massive effort, you have reduced power usage by only 8% -  you can't even close half of all nuclear power plants in the US.

  Or let's say you pass a law that says all homes in the US have to be solar powered.  We will ignore for the moment where you get the energy to produce the panels.  Now you have reduced power by 16% - you STILL can't close all the nuclear power plants in the country, and you have to leave coal power plants running full blast.

  When you talk about reducing energy usage by 70%, you're not talking about turning lights off at night.  You are talking about doing without aluminum, trash collection, recycling, sewers, water, glass, rubber, textile mills, fertilizer, food transportation, hospitals, schools, telephones, the internet etc.  There's no free lunch.  We have to get rid of the basics too, because that's where that energy is going - to make aluminum, and pump water, and make clothing.  

  Nor should we try to eliminate those things.  The reason we can buy solar panels is that we have a strong economy, so people can buy them, and we have spare energy, so factories can make them.  Take away any one of those things and environmentalism will cease to exist; it is basically a rich person's pursuit.

  Does that mean we shouldn't try?  Not at all!  But even if we do an outstanding job (say, we can reduce power usage by 20%) we have to choose between the lesser of two evils, coal or nuclear.  And coal is worse than nuclear.

  >There is no safe level of exposure to ionising
  > radiation (i.e., radioactivity).  According to
  > Dr. Helen Caldicott . . .

  Helen Caldicott is an anti-nuclear activist.  My wife, who is a physician but is neither employed by the nuclear industry or by the anti-nukes, thinks that there are safe levels of ionizing radiation.  She has even had training in how much is safe and how much is unsafe.  I have several friends who are intact now because radiation was used to help fix them.

  >However, this natural, background radioactivity
  > also injures and kills people if the level is
  > too high.

  Exactly.  There is too much radiation and there is too little.  Bricks have a higher than background level of radiation, as do most basements and most granite.  Most coal does too.  Smoke detectors and CRT's emit radiation as part of their operation.  But none of these things are hazardous, because the level is not too high.

  Now, take coal fired power plants.  They DO emit high levels of radiation.  They emit pounds of thorium and uranium every year directly into the air, and we end up breathing it in.  They are responsible for 30,000 deaths a year from the stuff they emit from their stacks.

  Now look at nuclear power plants.  No fatalities of the general public due to commercial nuclear power plant accidents.  No emission of radiation.  Sure, we have the waste to deal with, but we do deal with it - we don't just pump it into the air.  It's not perfect, but it's much better than coal.
  On An interview with longtime anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott posted 4 years, 6 months ago 18 Responses

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  Not hard

  We have a greywater system set up at our house in San Diego.  We have a 35 gallon tank next to our washing machine; the machine drains directly into the tank then slowly drains out an external hose bib.  We move the hose once a day.

  We also use the water from our shower.  This is a bit more difficult since our house is built on a slab and we can't easily get to the drain.  To get around this we use a bilge pump connected to a drain on the wall.  Works OK, although you have to leave water in the tub until the pump empties it.

  We use biodegradable laundry soap and regular products in the shower.  We water roses and citrus trees with it; they seem to be fine with the soapy water.  The hose is long enough to let the water cool down before it gets to the plants.  We don't do any filtering, and have had only one clog (in the hose outside) after 2 years of usage.On Umbra on channeling gray water to the garden posted 4 years, 6 months ago 8 Responses

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  Nuclear is bad. Coal is just worse.

  >"If our approach as environmentalists is 'live
  > your lives cold, miserable and unhappy!' I
  > don't think we'll have much success."  Is that
  > how you view traditional indigenous people?

  Not at all.  The indigenous people I've met (primarily in sub-Saharan Africa) were among the happiest people I have met.  I'm talking about americans, who use more energy than anyone else on the planet.  An approach that they must forego 70% of their energy usage (laundry detergents, vehicles, antibiotics, fresh food etc) will simply not work very well.  Much better to plan how to get more done with less energy, and how to generate that energy more cleanly.

  >However, if you set your goals too low, you
  > won't accomplish anything meaningful even if
  > you're successful.  Our goals in this regard
  > should be to rid the planet of all nukes AND
  > coal powered plants.

  Again, you are proposing reducing our energy usage by 70%.  How do you propose to do this?  How would you alter your own life to meet this goal?  It is a good goal for the US at large, but it is unreasonable for anything but the very far future.  For us and our children, we need to make the best choices for both the near and the far future.

  >However, there is no such thing as a safe
  > amount of radioactivity, so that any amount
  > added to the background levels is harmful.

  Not true at all.  Low levels of radiation are actually beneficial.  Indeed, people exposed to no radiation at all suffer from diseases like vitamin D deficiency, and there is evidence that low level radiation stimulates our cell's natural anti-mutagenic system, a system critical to repair damage to our cells caused by reactive oxygen species in our bodies.

  This should not come as a suprise to anyone.  We evolved on a planet that has a low level of background radiation from the uranium in the dirt, the ionizing radiation from the sun and the high energy radiation from deep space.  Our bodies are designed to work best in such an environment.  It is, of course, important not to increase it too much, but the statement that "no amount of radiation is safe" is not true.  A certain level of radiation is not just safe, it's how our bodies are designed to work.

  >Finally, no one has even mentioned the fact
  > that plutonium is THE MOST TOXIC substance
  > known, period.  If you support nukes, you add
  > more of this unnatural crap to the planet.

  Of course.  But we are better off looking at a pound of plutonium from 10 miles away, buried in a cask, than breathing in a pound of uranium released by a coal power plant.

  There is no doubt that nuclear power is not the best form of power out there.  Every form of power, from solar to wind to natural gas to coal to nuclear, has drawbacks.  But nuclear is far, far preferable to coal.  The 30,000 people whose lives were cut short this year by coal plants would likely agree.  It is hard to compose a philosophical objection that trumps that many lives lost.On An interview with longtime anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott posted 4 years, 6 months ago 18 Responses